


Dissonance

by Blurhawaii



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-29
Updated: 2014-04-29
Packaged: 2018-01-21 07:27:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1542560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blurhawaii/pseuds/Blurhawaii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a certain kind of cop mentality that translated well into the new world.</p><p>And it was the kind that Rick had always tried to avoid in the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dissonance

**Author's Note:**

> I'm usually a straight A-Z writer but this was like pulling scrabble tiles out of a bag. Lines came from all over the place and I'm still not sure how well this works.

There was a certain kind of cop mentality that translated well into the new world.

And it was the kind that Rick had always tried to avoid in the past.

While not long after the turn, a mere glimpse of the hat and badge was as good a show of gentle authority as a steadily trained gun, it physically pained Rick to see that people were quick to forget how often the cop veneer was just a front. How for some people it was just an excuse to be able to kick some guy’s head in and still go home with a healthy conscience, maybe even a shiny new commendation.

Rick knew this. Thought he had a handle on it too.

At the end of each day he went home, his chest free of medals, and he looked his son in the eye. He held his wife when she’d let him and clapped his hand around Shane’s shoulder with a smile.

He knew which kind he was.

It was not until the cracks started appearing in Shane that he realised how naïve he’d been.

From that point on it was a war of cop, over man, over father, over human, constantly ticking away in the back of Rick’s head. What was him and what was the veneer? Behind his eyes, under his ribs, in the tips of his fingers, anywhere that might be contracted and called upon to deal out affection or brutality in the group.

It was a ticking that began to sound suspiciously like Shane’s voice, the longer it went on, asking him, demanding of him, “When will it be your time, bud?”

And even after the real Shane had been silenced, the ticking was there to keep up the steady push, push, push of Rick’s decline.

\---

There were times when he would get flashes of the old world, usually at the worst possible time; coming on vague and creeping, almost like a previous life. Dreamlike was the word Rick often used. And clearing the bowels of the prison with the “help” of the prisoners was one of those times where Rick really struggled to keep in the present.

The ticking in his head was a roulette wheel, weighted heavily towards the section labelled ‘cop’. There were sometimes other outcomes, the hat and badge were long gone at this point, but he still had his gun.

He was still in control.

When Tiny crumbled in front of him, a flash of a memory - or was it a dream - flooded Rick’s mind. The image of a man huddled in the cold, hard corner of a cell. His face was a frightened, bloody mess that Rick only caught a brief flash of before he curled into himself with a gut-twisting whine. A different man, a man with Shane’s shoulders, Carl’s eyes and his own hands, clenched into fists, towered over him. 

Thirsty for destruction, his boot-clad heel had come down into the other’s ribs hard, again and again. The sick sound of snapping bone was an all-new experience back then. The visceral grunts, groans and hisses were too.

Rick remembered watching this scene, stunned into idleness, his conscience choking in his throat. Then, all of a sudden, Shane was pressing firm against his shoulder, breathing out slurs as easy as air and Rick was finally able to step forward and do his job.

Here, it took the force of hitting the concrete floor to knock him out of it but it was Daryl’s hand wrapping around his that truly brought him back.

Burying the machete into that prisoner’s skull felt a lot like vindication for that other man, whose name he never thought to learn and definitely something of a turning point for himself.

It was funny really, the cracks were appearing in him front, right and centre and still the group continued to look to him.

Alone at night, he wondered which version of him they saw.

\---

When it happened, Lori’s death killed him too.

Grief tore through him as succinctly as the bullet through his shoulder and he spared no thought for the little girl that was now their responsibility.

It wouldn’t do him any good to dwell on soft new skin and little fingers and toes when every instinct was telling him to wrap his hands around something and pull and rip and tear until nothing was left.

With both Lori and Shane gone, Rick’s humanity was toeing the edge. Being forced to be witness to both his wife and his best friend succumbing to this terrible world, he no longer held any hope for himself. And as the ticking kept reminding him, it was only a matter of time before he keeled over and joined them.

The surviving bodies in his periphery with their reaching, grasping hands and teary eyes, they were just a ticking time bomb, a precursor to an inevitable end and with each passing day, Rick felt more and more like the match poised to strike a spark.

Eying Carl’s down-turned face in the yard, both old and impossibly young, it had hit Rick. The idea of bowing out now before any more damage could be done to the boy wasn’t as painful as it had once seemed.

Carl would certainly be in cleaner, more capable hands, he was sure of it.

Accepting that, Rick’s own life no longer seemed to matter. Nothing mattered in that instant except the weight of a weapon in his hand and armed with the knowledge that it could do damage, it carried him back towards the smell of death and decaying walkers.

Only, even down here where he belonged, voices continued to echo around the halls and the hollow inside of his skull. Like a fucking metronome, Shane’s taunts welcomed him in one ear while the new baby’s cries damned his cowardice in the other.

He was trapped a state in-between; neither one nor the other.

Cop over father, cop over father.

After an indeterminable haze of blood and burning muscles, Glenn eventually came to find him and a traitorous part of Rick briefly wondered why it was Glenn and not Daryl. Where was that steady hand of his when he truly needed it? When he was gore splattered and down where was Daryl’s stability to secure his feet firmly onto the ground?

Like an itch, the frenzied part of Rick’s mind begged to know.

The light touch of Glenn’s hand to his chest was a smaller combustion of feeling that only made Rick frailer. In the old world, Glenn would have still been a kid and Rick couldn’t help it that the lines sometimes blurred together. He tossed Glenn’s lithe weight away from him, unsure whether it was an act of protection or violence.

He then roamed the halls for hours until he stumbled on a desk where a phone sat waiting for him. 

Picking up that phone and hearing a roll call of voices he failed to keep alive was a lot like hearing the dirt pile down on top of his own coffin. 

It wasn’t until Lori’s voice floated through that Rick realised the cracks in his own self were actually gaping holes.


End file.
